


Seeds of Discord Pt. 18

by kbj1123



Series: Wonder Woman & Captain America [19]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Crossover Pairings, F/M, One True Pairing, Sexual Content, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 15:02:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3330314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbj1123/pseuds/kbj1123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone or something is causing violent riots to erupt all over the U.S., and whatever it is, it wreaks havoc with both Wonder Woman's health and Bruce Banner's ability to keep his rage in check.</p><p>After a very late-night debriefing at SHIELD HQ, Diana and Steve are finally home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeds of Discord Pt. 18

When Steve makes his way from the corner drugstore back home, it is still early and cold and gray. Frosty mist clings to his hair and his beard—this beard which Diana implied, but never insisted, had to go. So with new razor blades and shaving cream, along with a few sundry items in the bag, he trudges his way through icy slush on the sidewalk and then up the stairs to the third floor of the brownstone. He feels purposeful. He is heading home to his wife, and even if it isn' from some battle, it's still with purpose and accomplishment behind him. 

The immediate debriefing upon landing could have waited. To Steve’s relief, he and Diana still have jobs for now; Maria Hill had run interference for Steve, and Diana couldn’t be faulted for being abducted directly from SHIELD. The more important question, of course, is how that could have happened. Most of Agent Coulson’s team has taken up that investigation because SHIELD has been three Avengers short. Technically, they still are. His time AWOL is not without consequences. His presence at SHIELD, for now, is in an observational capacity only. Natasha, Thor, and Tony have been dealing with riots all over the continental U.S. with various degrees of success (i.e., low collateral damage). Diana pointed out that there was ONLY collateral damage. “The riots have no target except for violence itself,” she observed. She didn’t bother trying to hide how sad that makes her. 

However, she’d promised over the phone that she’d had new insight while she was in captivity. “This isn’t merely a fight among mortals,” she reported, “and I now believe that these small-scale violent episodes are not going to remain small-scale.” It was nearly midnight, The District was a solid sheet of ice, and even Maria didn’t look as if she really wanted to be there. They were all three worn-down and fueled by caffeine alone. 

“Mr. Backus is a not very clever play on the word Bacchus. I believe that the Concordance Group is the face of a Dionysian cult. The fact that his brother, Apollo, went out of his way to assist me speaks to this. He is the god of reason and the rational; Dionysus is the god of chaos and the irrational. I believe this is the human aspect of a war between two Olympians. I believe the followers of Dionysus have forcibly recruited Bruce, and maybe, Apollo has more subtly co-opted my assistance by healing me.” Steve wasn’t especially surprised by this, and he was too tired at that point to be angry. He should have been able to save her before she’d been sucked into a war that didn’t necessarily concern them, except for its effects on their own Earthly plane.

When they finally dragged themselves up to the apartment, Diana carefully hung up her coat, neatly placed her rumpled SHIELD-issued sweats into the hamper, and showered. There is still a routine to follow even after chaos. He smiles at the memory of her finally emerging from the bathroom, waterdrops slicking down her breasts and beading where nipples and towel met. He thinks about the curve of her hips sheathed beneath the white towel, the narrow sweep of her waist, and how she smiled when she caught him gaping at her. Her mouth made him think of the shadowy place hidden under her towel. Even dog-tired, he couldn’t deny some basic mammalian instinct that her presence, just as she was, finally home, stirred in him. She hung up her towel on its hook, opened up a dresser drawer and pulled out an old baseball jersey of his and a pair of panties. She was dead-asleep in moments, and it took what felt like forever for him to calm down again and sleep. When he left this morning, she rolled over and draped her arm across his side of the bed. No matter how much she protests the label because she is so literal sometimes, she really did look like an angel.

“I miss your face,” she’d told him in the motel while the plane was grounded. “It’s handsome no matter what, but I do miss your skin.” He could tell she was leaving something unsaid. When pushed, she admitted she didn’t like his hair in her mouth. He’d laughed at her, but now it is barely past dawn, and he is returning home from an important errand. He balances the bag’s handle over his forearm and distributes five of the six cups of coffee he’s got in a cardboard carrier to the men in the side alley. The men huddle on plastic milk crates around a fire they’ve set in a graffiti-covered trash can. The shelter does not open for another two hours. The alley is strewn with the days-old junk food remnants, foam cups, and miscellaneous debris they’ve emptied onto the street for their fire container. These denizens and their surroundings all smell slightly toxic. They mumble things like “peace brother,” and “thanks, man,” and he wishes he could do more. He drinks the last coffee even though it’s scalding. He enjoys the burning sensation on his tongue.

At the stoop that leads up to his building, he pauses and looks at the monotonous sky. “Wherever you are right now Sun God, thanks for bringing her back to me. I still don’t trust you, but I’m grateful.” He locks their apartment door behind him and he hears music from the living room—that improvisational jazz Diana likes. Her back is turned to him, and the music is loud enough for her not to notice that he’s watching as she dances around in that old Yankees top and pink bikini underwear. The curve of the shirt slips from side to side past the small of her back as she rocks her hips in circles. She brings her hands to the nape of her neck and lifts her long, black hair away from her back. Her spine looks much more fluid and fragile than he knows it actually is. Her entire torso undulates to the dissonant angles of Thelonious Monk’s music. 

When she turns around and notices him, she smiles but doesn’t stop dancing. Her teeth are small and even; there is the visceral memory of their sharpness on his ears. Her lips look stung as if she’s been swallowing saltwater. Sometimes everything about her, no matter where she is, reminds him of the beach and of her literal otherworldliness. He’s mesmerized as if this was the first time he’d ever walked in on her dancing. Her breasts press against the white front of her shirt: every curve and the tips of her dark pink nipples and he feels as if he already tastes them just by looking. He swallows hard but doesn’t dare break the spell by moving or speaking. Then she runs her fingers across her collarbones, down the center of her torso over her flat stomach, to the edge of her shirt. She plays with the hem, which drapes just past the top edge of her pink cotton panties, and then approaches him. She stands a few inches away, just enough for him to smell the spicy sweetness of her breath. She brings her bright ocean eyes to meet his and then kneels in front of him. His breath catches. She picks up the drugstore bag he’s dropped and stands again. “This first,” she says authoritatively. She takes him by the hand and leads him into the bedroom, past the bed and into the bathroom with the bag of razors and shaving cream.

She leans into him and he grips the edges of the vanity bench because she’s already warned him about touching her while she’s shaving his face. “You’re in no shape to do this yourself, she’d observed as she ran her index finger beneath his waistband,” and you certainly need to stay still. I’ve never done this before." Even with that admission, he has no reservations whatsoever about the safety of his jugular at the mercy of a sharp blade in her hands. He does his best to stay still but even so, each time she reaches past him to rinse the blade or towel his face, her body rises from some invisible sea and he holds onto the bench because he will capsize into the firm smoothness of her belly if he lets go. With each sweep of thin metal, there is less difference between the razor or her mouth gliding over his jawline, or the sharp edges of her teeth just above his upper lip and the corners of his mouth. 

When she pronounces her task complete, he stands up very carefully because what he really wants is to dive into her right now. Instead he steadies himself by placing one hand over her shoulder, and she slithers up the length of his body. Her nipples are erect through her shirt, and they glide over his bare torso. He wants to tear off her clothes and lift her breasts one at a time to his mouth. Instead, he scoops her up and carries her to their bed. She climbs over him and dips down to pull off his sweatpants and boxers. She circles her tongue over his balls, the hollow space to the side of each hip bone, and from the base of his penis to its head. Then she pops back up to face him and she explores his face with her mouth. Even her kisses sting like saltwater. “The beard absolutely had to go,” he agrees. But so does this,” and he sits up, pulls the shirt over her head and bites gently down on one nipple. Her response is one of his favorite sounds in the world.

Her fingers move back down to where he presses into her panties, which are damp. She rips the fabric away and tosses it aside. They rock into each other and he never wants it to stop. He might cease breathing altogether if they stop so he rolls on top of her and keeps moving his fingers down her spine, which undulates like waves. Or maybe he is made of waves and saltwater. Perhaps there simply is no land anymore. Her skin is ocean and seabed and shoreline all at once. She begins to shake and her breath comes in gasps; his heart quickens and he remembers what it feels like to almost drown. Then she involuntarily presses her hips up and into him she says his name—not any god’s, just his. There is that feeling in his balls and his whole body seems to awaken from a kind of trance. Many decades ago he was drowning and freezing and she rescued him. Now he gasps as he comes up for air and she rescues him again and again and again.


End file.
